Franck Péron

During my master degree I worked on referential communication in African grey parrots and then I decided to focus my studies on the Social Brain Hypothesis in Psittacidae for my PhD.

Human, some non-human primates (like chimpanzees) and some mammals (like dolphins, elephants ...) have a big brain in comparison with their body size. The brain consumes a huge quantity of energy and animals have to ingest a lot of food in order to obtain what they need. Furthermore it seems that most of the time this big brain is far from being used at his maximum. Thus, why natural selection mechanisms which occur in the evolution process of the species has continued to promote those big -brained animals'?

One of the hypotheses proposed (Joly, 1966 ; Humphrey,1976 ; Byrne & Whiten, 1988 ; Dunbar, 1998) is that those cognitive abilities would be used to manage the complex relation engage in a social life.

Some bird species (belonging to two families: Psittacidae and Corvid) have shown cognitive abilities and social interactions (studies of Pepperberg, Bovet, Giret, Emery & Clayton, Bugnyar, Gajdon....) as complicated to those observed in primates. Those birds are living in group; they have a long infancy' and then a long sexual life. It has been also demonstrated that their brains were very developed comparing to their body size. So the following question has to be asked: can we verify in those animals the hypothesis accepted for evolved' mammals?

My study undertaken under the supervision of D. Bovet and L. Nagle tends to highlight some components of the Social Brain Hypothesis such as competition, cooperation, deception, selfish and prosocial behaviours.